Movies: 'Paddington 2' is a delight

By Al Alexander/For The Patriot Ledger

Friday

Jan 12, 2018 at 7:00 AM

You gotta love a kid’s movie that mercilessly pokes fun at pardoned jailbird Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the hate-based Brexit initiative, while also turning London into an ideal habitat for an enterprising bear hungry for marmalade. If you don’t already know that I’m talking about “Paddington 2,” you should because it’s easily one of the best family entertainments come to bear.

It’s also the rare sequel that both betters the 2014 original and deepens the story of a floppy-hatted, duffle-coated young ursus who’s emigrated from “darkest Peru” to the not-always-welcoming city of London. Like the last time we saw Paddington, he’s melded well into his new home in Notting Hill, where he’s taken up residence with the equally quirky Brown family: dad, Henry (“Downton Abbey’s” Hugh Bonneville), mom, Mary (“The Shape of Water’s” Sally Hawkins), their two teenagers, Judy (Madeleine Harris) and Jonathan (Samuel Joslin), and often-sotted housekeeper, Mrs. Bird (the always delightful Julie Walters).

After a pre-title sequence in which we learn more about how the orphaned Paddington (whimsically voiced by Ben Whishaw) came to be raised by the benevolent Uncle Pastuzo and Aunt Lucy (voiced by Michael Gambon and Imelda Staunton), the movie gets right to the plot, which involves Paddington’s efforts to find a job so he can earn enough dough to buy a pop-up book containing 12 iconic scenes of London. It will be a gift for Lucy’s upcoming 100th birthday, and Paddington believes that since he can’t bring his aunt to London, it’s his way of bringing London to her at “The Old Bears Home.”

Returning director Paul King, who also wrote the screenplay with Simon Farnaby, makes sure Paddington’s entry into the workforce is calamitous, most delightfully as a window washer in a scene that duly honors British icon Charlie Chaplin, as a heavy bucket of water and a crudely rigged pulley teach the bear a painful lesson about the ups and downs of gravity. It’s just one of a dozen bits honoring the island’s film heroes from Mr. Bean to Benny Hill. There’s even a terrific nod to Kansas’ Buster Keaton involving a pair of moving locomotives and a creaky ladder.

Then there’s Hugh Grant, hilarious as a former A-list actor whose star has fallen so far he’s reduced to doing dog food commercials dressed as a foppish canine. Talk about good sports! His Phoenix Buchanon is also the villain of the piece, taking over from Nicole Kidman’s ruthless taxidermist in the original. And a better bad guy I cannot think of, as Grant hams it up by donning various costumes – hobo, nun, vicar – to carry out a fiendish plan to use the very same book Paddington has his eye on to search for clues that will lead to a buried treasure large enough to finance his perceived comeback in a one-man show in the West End.

Like Paddington, Phoenix doesn’t have enough cash to buy the prominently displayed book in the antiques shop owned by the eccentric Mr. Gruber (Jim Broadbent), so he steals it, and through fate, manages to frame the bear for the crime. This leads to the movie’s best segment, as Paddington softens his surly cellmates – including the pen’s particularly ill-tempered chef, Nuckles McGinty (a scene-stealing Brendan Gleeson) – by introducing them to the magic of marmalade. Might the sweet confection – and a good bedtime story – be the answer to ending all criminal behavior forever? This is also where the jab at Arpaio comes in, as King cooks up a way for Paddington, assigned to the prison laundry, to mix his colors with his whites, turning all the inmates’ striped uniforms a very unmanly pink. That you’ll remember is the same color of the underwear “Sheriff Joe,” as his buddy Trump calls the convicted – and pardoned – bigot, forced his inmates in Maricopa County to wear.

It’s politics, yes, as is the franchise’s continuing theme of using Paddington as a metaphor for “The Other,” all the people of color looking for new homes away from their dangerous countries of origin. But Bond and Farnaby, adapting the beloved books by the recently deceased Michael Bond, handle it in such a subtle, unobtrusive manner that you might not even notice. It exists, though, and more than once it got to me, including the film’s happy-tears finale.

It’s well-earned, too, unlike a lot of manipulative Hollywood fare like “Wonder.” Here, the feelings are real, delivered with perfect accuracy by a resplendent cast of actors – many of them veterans of the Harry Potter series – who are literally the best the UK has to offer. You marvel in their presence, especially Grant and Whishaw. But you also admire the people behind the scenes just as much. Like the seamless way the computer-generated Paddington fits into every real-life scene, and a host of endearing special effects, exemplified by the jaw-dropping way the aforementioned pop-up book springs to three-dimensional life.

Then there’s King’s marvelous penchant for great sight gags, awful – but funny – puns and “Family Guy”-like asides that pop-up out of the blue and leave you laughing uproariously. Even better are what I like to call “the breadcrumbs” King scatters throughout the picture, little tidbits like Mary dreaming of being an underwater hero (shades of Hawkins’ current aquatic thrills in “The Shape of Water”), or Henry’s astute accuracy in throwing a ball, that comeback to play major roles in the film’s thrilling Perils of Pauline finale.

It’s all so impressively clever. More so, it’s smart and witty, tinged with just the right touch of underlying melancholy. Yet “Paddington’s” finest quality is its old-fashioned charm. It’s the antidote to the crass, dishonorable way Hollywood has rendered the works of other great children’s authors like Dr. Seuss (“The Grinch” and “Lorax”) and Beatrice Potter (the upcoming degradation of her no-longer sweet and gentle “Peter Rabbit”). “Paddington 2” is having none of that, yet it still adapts itself well to the 21st century without sacrificing any of its enchantment, as evidenced this week by its three nominations – for Grant, the adapted screenplay and Best British Film – from the BAFTAs, the UK’s equivalent of the Oscar.

Of that trio, Grant might well be the most deserving for the ingenuity he brings to the well-dubbed Phoenix. Like his character’s namesake, Grant has rapidly risen from the ashes the past two years with his acclaimed work in “Florence Foster Jenkins” and “Paddington 2.” It’s a timely reminder what a treasure he is both as an actor and comedian. And stick around during the final credits to see he’s also one helluva song-and-dance man, as Phoenix brings down the (Big) House before a “captive audience.” Not only is it hilarious, it’s the perfect end to a nearly perfect movie that thoroughly and genuinely restores something we haven’t seen a lot of lately – childhood wonder.